Thats tough to answer.. Just because a person has bought stocksand had accounts for a number of years does not make them studentsof the markets.. Retail brokers are a good example, most of those thathave 25 years do not know sicum...

A person has to decide that question him/herself, how long haveyou watched the ebb and flow markets closely? When did you startbuying books? When did you stop taking brokers Recommendations?When did you first start calling the top? ggg. If it is less than3 years, maybe that person is still "new".

Jim: you might look at buying some GASFX and reinvesting the dividends. I don't think you'll be sorry. They own just about everybody in the natural gas business- you'll make money on industry consolidation at a minimum.

Mutual funds obviously foster and encourage the Buy and Hold mentality. Most mutual funds are very tax inefficient, since the average domestic equity mutual fund has a turnover ratio of 88%.

Additionally, the folks in mutual funds with a low turnover ratio will be in for a big surprise when the BK does arrive. As bond fund holders found out in '94, its not a lot of fun to see the NAV go down and big taxable dividend distributions at coming into the tax return.

As I've said to you before, I agree with your concept. Forget the mutual funds, buy the stock of the publically traded ones.

The same goes for SPY versus mutual funds in general. Much more tax efficient, lower expense ratio, and better performance than 90% of the funds. An exception exists for "specialty" funds where the manager's expertise and diversification is of importance.

X: AR is interesting- it's selling at half its book value and has a 3.5% dividend. Also interesting is SOA, it has a huge dividend. A lot of the south african gold/diamond/etc mines are selling wa-a-a-y below historic book value and have dividends, SOA could be timely for commodity bulls. South africa and chile are on my short list of emerging nations that are likely to actually emerge in the next 5-10 years.

Speaking of Divergences, did you notice that we have a TRIPLE bearish divergence on the Nasdaq?(three price tops and three oscilator tops) Just look at the weekly MACD Histogram.

A bearish divergence is severe enough and is the strongest sell signal in technical analysis (according to Alexander Elder). But it looks like we have a triple setting up...

And it is interesting to note that at least on the DJIA in 82 we had a triple BULLISH divergence that foresaw a massive surge to the upside..and hence this bull market...now we have the opposite..time for a bear market?